RURAL COMMUNITIES NOT IMMUNE FROM DRUG PROBLEM

BUNNLEVEL -- Jack used to knock on his neighbors' doors, asking for
money to buy more crack cocaine.

They gave it to him because they knew him. They eventually stopped
because Jack came by time after time. He has been addicted for six
years.

Some days, he is barely able to look at a picture of his father, he is
so ashamed. The picture shows his father in Vietnam, the day before he
died in the Tet offensive. Jack looks at that photo and wonders to
himself, "How can you let something like this destroy you?"

Jack says, "If you want to live in hell on earth, pick up a rock of
cocaine."

Jack's story is an example of how drugs are reaching not just into the
streets of the bigger cities, but into small towns and communities. In
Bunnlevel, an unincorporated community, not a town, residents do not
have the weapons to fight back. They do not have their own police
force. They do not have easy access to counseling services.

"No cops, no substation, why not?" said Ellen Fay, a cook at the
Bunnlevel Grocery & Grill.

About 150 people live in the center of Bunnlevel. About 1,000 others
live on the farms and in the small neighborhoods nearby. It is 20
miles to Fayetteville and 10 miles to Lillington.

Residents say the country gives drug dealers a place to hide. Many
people are afraid to report them to police.

Bobby Johnson said he had no choice.

He lives in the Flatwoods community, two or three miles north of
Bunnlevel. He keeps a miniature New Testament in his shirt pocket.

When a neighbor shot at him, he tucked police officers' business cards
between the pages of Acts. His hands shake when he turns the tattered
pages.

"I expect to be shot again any day," Johnson says.

"It makes me mad and it scares me, too."

A man with glazed eyes shot at him in his own back yard. The shots
missed Johnson but they left pockmarks in the side of his trailer.

Johnson says the man was high on drugs.

He says he has seen neighbors load drugs into cars. He says drug
dealers are "in the country more than in town. They know they can get
away with it in the country."

Sheriff's deputies arrested a man and charged him with shooting at
Johnson.

And deputies have taken other steps to combat drug activity around
Bunnlevel.

They closed a store called Tony's Place. Police reports say that an
undercover officer bought drugs there.

Since January, deputies have investigated 10 incidents of reported
drug use in Bunnlevel.

"I don't see Bunnlevel as any worse than any other community in our
county," said Maj. Steve West of the Harnett County Sheriff's Department.

But crime reports on drug charges may not tell the entire
story.

Drugs breed thieves

Sgt. Paul Hinson of the Cumberland County Narcotics Bureau says a
majority of break-ins are drug-related.

In recent months, Bunnlevel has had a rash of break-ins and has had
some robberies.

The most recent came when a man tried to rob the Bunnlevel Grocery &
Grill. Workers said he was on drugs.

Before that, in May, police in Harnett and Cumberland counties charged
four men with three robberies in the Bunnlevel area.

In February, five Cumberland County men were charged with breaking
into dozens of homes under construction and stealing appliances and
fixtures. Detectives said the break-ins may have been going on for
years in the two counties.

Sgt. Hinson says people steal to pay for their drug
habit.

It is a pattern that Jack, the Bunnlevel addict, knows well. Since he
began using cocaine, he has been charged with larceny, drunken driving
and assault. He has been in jail 10 different times. Now, he faces
charges of drunken driving and felony larceny.

He says cocaine has stolen his life.

"You want to put your arms around your little boy and little girl and
feel like a normal person again," he says.

People who study drug use by children in rural communities say many
people still have the idea that life in small communities is not
marred by urban problems.

"It's kind of one of those myths that rural areas don't have drug
problems," said Melinda Pankratz, a doctoral student who is studying
the effectiveness of school programs on drug abuse. "They often have
drug problems as much as our cities."

She works with Professor Denise Hallforf in the School of Public
Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But unlike bigger cities, smaller communities may have more power to
change, says another researcher, Ruth Edwards.

Edwards and others at the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research at
Colorado State University are studying drug abuse in 260 small
communities.

"The positive side of this problem is that rural communities have more
of an opportunity to do something about it," she says.

Edwards says small towns should capitalize on what they have --
close-knit communities where families have lived for
generations.

"They have to change it from a secretive, 'Let's don't tell anybody,'
to 'We all know about it. Let's solve the problem."'

The Rev. Roy McLamb and the Rev. Steve Gordon are trying.

"I could not tell you the number of people in our church," who have
struggled with drugs, says McLamb, the pastor of Flatwoods Community
Baptist Church.

They come to his church because they know they will be
accepted.

McLamb was hooked on drugs until the age of 38.

"I ran $100,000 worth of cocaine through my veins," he
said.

At 38, he saw hell, he says.

"When I woke up at 2:30 that Saturday morning, I realized there was a
literal hell and realized it would be worse than anything I could see
as a drug addict."

Anti-drug advocate

He went to church the next day.

But it was too late to save McLamb from jail. After his release from a
prison in Sanford, he went back the next day as a prison chaplain. He
visited almost every jail in North Carolina.

Now, his story is "part of my past and I use it for the glory of the
Lord."

The Rev. Steve Gordon is pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in
Bunnlevel. He has worked at other churches in Fayetteville, Raleigh
and Greensboro, but he never saw so many people struggling with drug
addiction as he did when he took the job at Friendship Baptist.

Gordon hopes he and McLamb and other ministers will work together to
heal the people who have come to them.

Jack says he talks to God every day.

"There's good and evil happening here," he says. "Don't tell me the
devil isn't cocaine."